Although Ankur India deals mostly with issues relating to the Bengali language, this project idea is not specific to Bengali.

A very common translation workflow consists of translating po files, which in turn are used within applications using gettext. One can use tools like lokalize, gtranslator etc which reads the po files, provides a GUI to help translate the strings and save them back to language specific po files. Thus a file relating to Bengali strings would go into a file called bn_IN.po.

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Although a lot of translation use cases are covered by po files, some aren't. For example, Mozilla usesDTD and properties files for the purpose. The idea is to extend the existing localisation tool(s) to cover these type of data files.

A logical first step would be to write an engine which is able to read dtd/properties files, take user input for translations and write a new language specific file. This program should be modular and API driven so that it can be quickly used to extend with any existing localisation tool, desktop or web based. On the other hand one should be able to quickly extend the engine to work with other similar data files.

Once that is ready it should be integrated with an existing translation tool, preferably a desktop app so that we have a proof of concept and a finished product which can be used by translators.

The application should be platform independent and can be written in the programmers choice of language, keeping in mind the scalability and portability.

With the above points clear, I'm open to any other suggestions on how to best approach the problem. In case you have any further doubts mail me at shreyankg AT gmail DOT com and I'll be happy to take up questions.